


The Domino Effect

by CassandraDarcy



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: Gen, Romance, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 16:58:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/689304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CassandraDarcy/pseuds/CassandraDarcy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia knows something Lizzie doesn't know, but she thinks it's time to tell her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Domino Effect

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably all be canonballed this week, but I had to write it anyway. This takes place post-Lydia/Domino arc, and kind of resolves some things I've wanted the show to tackle, though it hasn't yet. Even though it most likely won't happen this way, that's what fic is for. 
> 
> So I hope you enjoy, since this is my first time writing Lizzie or Lydia, and drop me a note if you do. Every review is appreciated. Thanks!

Lydia Bennet had a secret.

She was notoriously bad at keeping them, and eventually, Lydia couldn't take it anymore. She knew who had gotten her out of involuntarily becoming a web porn star, and she knew why Lizzie was in mope mode, even though she thought she was doing a good job of hiding it.

So, while apparently her benefactor's cohorts had been sworn to secrecy, she had not.

Lydia found Lizzie curled up on the couch in the den with a book, of course, and she grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.

"Lydia, are you okay? What are you doing?" Lizzie asked as she was dragged upstairs.

Lydia rolled her eyes where her sister wouldn't see. While she thought it was great that they were finally communicating, she was getting tired of being asked if she was okay all the time. She understood it, but it got old very quickly.

"I am fine, Lizzie. I just need you to see something," she said as they entered her room. She sat Lizzie down in front of her laptop on the desk, which was already queued up to a video playlist on YouTube.

Lizzie blinked as she saw GiGi Darcy's face on the screen, but she didn't understand. She looked at Lydia for an explanation.

"Look, believe it or not, I struggled with whether or not to show you these. But, since nothing seems to be happening between you two idiots on your own, sometimes you've gotta give people a shove."

Lizzie frowned, still speechless, which only made Lydia scoff.

"I've seen your videos from when you were at Pemberley Digital, Lizzie. And even if you haven't realized you like him, I know you do. So for God's sake, just watch these and then get off your ass and do something about it. I'm tired of you trying to be happy for my sake when I know you're really a mopey angst queen on the inside. Now, watch."

Lizzie nodded, still unable to formulate words, and Lydia turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Lizzie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, GiGi's smiling face looked back at her from the computer screen. What was this about? When did GiGi start making vlogs? She was so confused.

For that matter, when did her little sister get so perceptive?

If this was important to Lydia, she didn't know that she was prepared to see whatever was going to play out, but she hit the start button anyway. No turning back.

The first video was innocuous enough. These had started right before she left San Francisco, and she had heard whispers of the new app they were announcing. Apparently GiGi had been designated to test the Domino application publicly. What it had to with Lizzie, other than her mentioning Darcy reserving theater seats for the date he had proposed to her, she had no idea.

So on she went into the play list, and episode two was where things got weird. GiGi was clearly referencing the Lydia and George situation without ever saying anyone’s names, and she was pleading with Darcy to do something about it. So this was how it was about her. Lizzie had no idea how he could really help, or even why he would, but he looked tired and stressed when he talked to his sister on the demo.

By now her heart was practically in her throat. She felt dizzy. Fitz and Darcy had been working to try to find George and stop the tape, and GiGi was determined to help as well. And the entire time, she had had no idea that anything was being done except her and her father’s constant dead ends.

Every time she saw Darcy’s face, it was a little more surreal. He looked like he hadn’t slept much, if at all, in days, and he was literally scouring all of southern California looking for Wickham.

Episode four was GiGi trying to contact Wickham, and Lizzie was concerned because she could see what it cost her to even try. He had done horrible things to people she cared about, and she hated him for it. 

By the time she came to the fifth video, she thought she was going to start crying and never stop. GiGi had unknowingly set a trap for George, giving Darcy the advantage over him. GiGi had actually gotten that scumbag to call her back, and it pained Lizzie to see how much having to talk to him had upset her. George had predictably tried to play innocent, but she knew he was a liar. He was only out for himself, and whatever he could get by screwing over anyone in his path. He had walked out on GiGi for a check, and now he pretended like they were supposed to just be old friends catching up. He disgusted her, and she couldn’t believe there had ever been a time when she liked him or believed him over Darcy. 

It broke her heart to see Darcy’s concern for his baby sister when she told him what she had done, but there was finally hope in his face at her confession. Apparently they could track him through the app, and it was their last best hope to stop him.

When she came to the last video, she saw GiGi and Darcy much happier, and Darcy insisting that he was not going to tell Lizzie what he had done. To say she was floored was the understatement of the century. Though she knew Darcy to be extremely generous to his friends, and even though he was rich he never lorded it over anyone, this surprised her. That he would do what he did for her family, and, she assumed in large part, for _her_ , with no hope of acknowledgement was something she didn't even know how to process.

Darcy had stopped the tape from coming out. She still didn't know _how_ , but he had been the one.

She had grossly underestimated William Darcy, and she was sorry for it. He had been on her mind a great deal since she had had to cut her time at Pemberley Digital short, but she wouldn't admit that to anyone. There was too much going on with Lydia, and she had to focus on her family. But sometimes, in the dead of night, when she couldn't sleep and everything had gotten too much to bear, she would think about her time with the Darcys. She thought GiGi was a wonderful young woman, and her feelings about her brother had been extremely altered by the end of her stay.

But what of it now? Would he still want anything at all to do with her after what had happened? GiGi seemed to think so, but he seemed resigned to being done with it. What did it mean?

She was afraid to contact either of them, because she had no idea if that was appropriate. It was obvious GiGi missed her, but Darcy was not seeking her gratitude. She even assumed that what he had done was partly out of guilt for not getting rid of George in a better manner the first time. He knew firsthand what he was capable of doing to a girl with insecurities, and she knew enough now to know he probably blamed himself for that. What he had done had directly benefited the Bennets to be sure, but part of it was also for GiGi.

If he knew she had discovered his actions, she knew that anything she revealed past that would be hard for him to believe as anything but thankfulness for what he had done for her sister. The thing was, she... God, she might as well admit it to herself. She had started to care for him in ways that scared her. She thought with a certainty that took her by total surprise that if things had been different, she absolutely could have loved him.

No, she _did_ love him.

She laid her head on Lydia's desk and let out a low moan of self-loathing. How could she have misjudged and messed up so badly? How could she have been so wrong about every single aspect of - every single _person_ \- in her life?

Almost a year ago, she had thought herself superior to everyone else in wisdom and judgment, but now she realized she had been every bit as arrogant as Darcy had ever seemed to be. She might have been more well-adjusted and therefore able to hide it better, but everyone in her circle had merely been a caricature until now. She hadn’t really, truly known any of them until Bing and Darcy and a handful of others had come into her life and turned it virtually upside down.

Now she felt like she was starting from scratch at almost twenty-five years old, and she had no idea what to do with that. 

There was a knock on the bedroom door, and as she moaned, “Come in”, Lydia came back. She must have been sitting out in the hall. She must have heard her head bang against the desk.

“Lizzie, are you all right?” Lydia asked as she knelt beside her own desk chair.

“Nope,” Lizzie replied dully. “I believe we can safely say that I am not all right. My entire existence up to this point has been a lie. No one was who I thought they were, nothing was as it seemed. It was all some psychotic delusion in which I was the star of my own one-woman, self-righteous show. Now the curtain has been pulled back, and instead of an angry, talking head, it’s just William Darcy being a chivalrous knight on a white horse and saving all our asses.”

Lydia frowned. Lizzie could be so very weird sometimes. That much hadn’t changed.

Lizzie sat up and took Lydia’s hands. “I have made so, _so_ many mistakes. If mistakes were bread crumbs, we could follow a trail all the way back to… I don’t know now. Where did it start? High school? Middle school? Kindergarten?”

Lydia rolled her eyes. Maybe she shouldn’t have shown her GiGi’s videos. Now Lizzie was just hysterical.

“Oh my God, Lizzie, calm down. Look at who you’re talking to about mistakes. I’ve made plenty of them. Don’t you think we should just start figuring out how to fix them?”

“I don’t know how. I mean, Darcy… why would he do that?”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t for me. He doesn’t even really know me. Maybe he felt bad that George was allowed to strike again so maybe it was a little bit for me, but he saw what it did to you. He did it for _you_ , Lizzie.”

Lizzie felt the tears welling in her eyes, but she didn’t want to cry anymore. She was just so tired. She hadn’t realized what she wanted until she had no chance of having it anymore, and now it felt like nothing would ever be right again. Rationally, she knew she was just being hyperbolic in her exhaustion, but it felt real enough in the moment.

Lydia stood up finally and rubbed Lizzie’s back. “Come on, don’t cry.”

“I hate crying.”

“I know you do, but it’s okay if you need to. No one would blame you. You’ve been way too busy being strong for everyone else.”

That did it. The floodgates opened, and she couldn’t do anything but hold onto Lydia as she sobbed. 

Lizzie had never been in love before, and she thought this was a hell of a way to start.

When she started to calm down, Lydia retrieved tissues and a bottle of water. “I’m sorry, Lydia. I feel so stupid.”

Three months ago, Lydia would have had a really mean comeback for that, but this was now. “You’re not stupid. But boys totally are.”

Lizzie laughed at that. “They kind of are,” she said with a grimace. “Though sometimes some of them are much smarter than you realized.”

Lydia shrugged. “Maybe you should give him a second chance, Lizzie. I think we were wrong about him. He obviously cares about his sister a lot, and he cared about what happened to us. He can’t be that bad.”

Lizzie smiled and looked down at her lap. “He’s really not. I think we were starting to really get along, but now…” She twisted her hands. 

“Are you going to be all right?” Lydia asked.

“Only if you are,” she said.

“I’m getting there. For what it’s worth, I’m glad George is gone. If I ever see him again, he will be sorry.”

“And if I’m with you, he’ll be doubly sorry,” Lizzie said with conviction.

“But I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Darcy, so you need to prepare yourself for that.”

She hoped so, but she also had her doubts. No need to bring Lydia down with them, though. “When did my baby sister get so smart?” Lizzie marveled.

Lydia shook her head. “I’m just learning like everyone else.”

“I know the feeling,” Lizzie said. She took a deep breath, closed Lydia’s laptop, and took one more swipe at her eyes. “So, anymore big secrets? What do we do now?”

Lydia pretended to think for a moment. “No on the secrets.” She figured she had done enough for one day, and she might fill her in that she suspected Darcy had bought the entire porn distribution company later. She still wasn’t sure about that one. “Let’s go get ice cream. We haven’t been out of the house in two days, and I’m about to go crazy.”

“I think I’m already there,” Lizzie said. She thought it might be a good idea to clear their heads and infuse their systems with sugar. She would worry about everything else later. “Let’s go. I’m driving.”

Lydia didn’t even argue for once.

Finis


End file.
